


The Truth About Forever

by ainsley



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, sgrarepairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-15
Updated: 2007-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 02:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ainsley/pseuds/ainsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forever can be long and yet the shortest span of time imaginable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Truth About Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [**matt1969**](http://matt1969.livejournal.com/) for the 2007 [**sg_rarepairings**](http://community.livejournal.com/sg_rarepairings/) exchange. The fic decided it wanted to be Five Times Daniel Wanted Vala (and One Time He Kissed Her). Many thanks go out to [**dirty_diana**](http://dirty-diana.livejournal.com/) for a spectacular (and spectacularly last-minute!) beta.

Forever can be long and yet the shortest span of time imaginable.

Daniel spent one year happily married, the happiest year of his life. Next came two-and-a-half of searching, determination overriding fear, overriding everything except the urge to look harder, to work faster, to find her. That year was his forever, the one he longed to get back.

Despite himself, he’d lived while searching for her, lived in a way he never had before her, felt vital in a way different from that he felt with her. Life on Abydos, with Sha’re, it was all he’d wanted from life and more. It had been calm and peaceful, filled with love and family.

It went beyond contentment. He’d been happy, savoring each experience, every moment. When the search ended, he mourned his wife. But the search generated an energy of its own and propelled him forward, almost despite himself. How could a scholar not be energized by constant first contact, by discovering new cultures every week?

Daniel loved what he did, adored Jack and Sam and Teal’c, friends who became his family. They didn’t replace, would never replace Sha’re, but the vitality they brought forced him to live his life in a way he hadn’t before or on Abydos.

It took Ascending and returning to realize he was happy again, to recognize that he loved his life. His devotion to Sha’re kept him too linked to the past to notice that, however, until he stepped away from it. He never stopped loving his wife, but left her in his old life.

He still didn’t feel ready to move on, though, and held his heart in stasis.

Three years later, when Vala possessed him and told SG-1 she was pregnant, he found he’d given his heart away again, despite his intentions and despite the risk of having his heart broken again.

She was wrong about him wanting to get into her pants, though. Well, not wrong so much as imprecise. He wanted in her pants and in her heart, wanted her in his life, however long that lasted (he did seem to make a habit of dying).

Good thing for him she had married someone else, because loving Vala guaranteed him only one thing: heartbreak.

::

“You know, I never thought I'd agree with my father, but now I'm starting to remember about how he used to go on about how you nurture them and then you raise them and you teach them the best that you can and then all they do is break your heart. I always assumed that his experience was tainted by me.”

Daniel couldn’t entirely disagree with Vala’s father. He didn’t feel the least bit fatherly toward her, but he certainly wanted to nurture her. He thought he’d rather skip the heartbreak part, though, were it all the same.

“She'll be a fully-grown figurehead in a day or so. If she takes after her mother, she'll have a pretty good figure too.”

For once he couldn’t fault her logic, and he took a tiny break from anti-Ori planning to wonder how she managed to look so great so few hours after childbirth. Lacking a more adequate response, he said, “This is bad.”

“You're telling me! Origin is about to become a lot more appealing to the males of this galaxy.”

Again, he had to agree. Was she making sense, or was love having a detrimental effect on his critical thinking?

When she explained Adria’s name, though, the world began making sense again.

He said, “You know, the more I get to know you, the more I'm starting to understand.”

It only took him 41 years to learn that love really can make you crazy, because he was starting to understand why men in multiple galaxies wanted this woman for more than a quick roll in the hay.

::

Daniel’d had a lot of unusual experiences in recent years, meeting strange creatures, contracting extra-terrestrial diseases, and, on several occasions, saving the galaxy.

Only Ascension could possibly compete with the rush of having Merlin’s memories downloaded into his brain.

Having Merlin and Daniel Jackson in one brain used up most of it, but while building the Sangraal, he retained some awareness of events around him.

He heard Vala arguing with Mitchell, demanding that Daniel not be allowed to proceed. He didn’t have the spare bandwidth, so to speak, to process that data; he filed it away, but not without briefly pondering its significance.

Daniel finally had time to think about it while becoming a Prior, but never found any answers. Was she protecting a teammate? A friend? Or looking out for someone who meant more than that to her?

If he did, indeed, mean more to her, did it matter? Could Vala have a serious relationship? Did she even want one?

Then she just had to go and sit on his lap, while he was in the midst of some very serious galaxy-saving business, and he almost stopped caring about forever when he had her now. He wanted to listen to her all day, wanted to put his arms around her when she said she’d cleared her whole afternoon for planning. The anti-Prior device trapping him saved him from himself.

Even with two brains in one, he could not solve the riddle of Vala Mal Doran. Forget the Russians; Vala was the real riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an astonishingly beautiful, surprisingly fragile enigma.

::

When Daniel met Jacek, Vala began to make sense in ways he wanted nothing more than to repair.

Vala’s sometimes hard, cynical nature came from being hurt, and from having the wounded girl who missed her father so close to her surface. She’d grown up, lived life with an intensity and passion few could match, but none of that could provide the child within what she craved.

He trusted Vala’s opinion of her father, believed her when she said he couldn’t be trusted. Con man or no, Jacek remained her father and as such was perhaps the only one capable of freeing her of childhood burdens.

Initially, Daniel thought he’d made a mistake in trying to arrange a truce between them. In the weeks after Jacek left, though, he noticed a subtle but definite change in Vala. She seemed lighter, her joy more joyful and somehow calmer.

She was still the Vala he loved, the Vala who frustrated him and excited him.

He remained uncertain if he could trust her with his heart.

::

In a series of events both preposterous and typical of life within the SGC, their team lived 50 years that only Teal’c remembered. Daniel had to wonder if he had ever approached her during that time.

But, as she said on their next mission, life is short. Daniel understood the truth of that more than anyone.

He started flirting with her a bit more, started treating her with more respect. She teased him relentlessly, but he found that the more seriously he took her, the more seriously she took herself and him.

::

Mitchell had a lot of fun with mistletoe that Christmas, forcing unlikely couples to kiss. Walter and Lam appeared to enjoy themselves, while Landry looked on in mock consternation.

With Mitchell carrying around mistletoe on a pole, Daniel didn’t think to look for it elsewhere. Their sneaky prankster of a commander, though, had other ideas.

Daniel stood in his usual corner, watching and waiting for the party to come to him. There had always been a wreath high on that wall, and he’d had so many kiss-free conversations there that night that he didn’t think twice when Vala came up to him, carrying two gifts.

She passed him the unfamiliar one, and said, “Guess what’s inside the box!”

Daniel, with a bit of a naughty look on his face, took the heavy wrapped box from her and shook it beside his left ear.

“Hmm. Solid and substantial, but silent upon shaking. This warrants further study.”

“Hey! That’s cheating!” Vala’s mouth pouted and her hands went to her hips, but her dancing eyes gave her away.

“I don’t recall you establishing rules. And a gift this good deserves a good guess.”

“So guess! And no thumping!” She’d apparently noticed his fingers preparing to treat it like a melon.

He held it before him, examining it from all angles while Vala huffed in feigned impatience, clearly enjoying the seriousness he gave the task.

“Is it a new pen?”

“Nope!”

Taking in her growing grin, he suspected a trick.

“Is it air? Did you give me an empty box?”

She laughed, loud and long, while motioning for him to open it.

Her gift for him was a beautiful wooden box, his name in Ancient in bas-relief on the silky rosewood surface. He felt his gift, the complete _I Love Lucy_, paled in comparison, but her enthusiasm quelled his doubts.

Neither of them expected Mitchell’s gift--the mistletoe hidden in the wreath above--or his tact in exposing it when everyone else was occupied.

The kiss started as the typical under-mistletoe friendly peck, but neither of them seemed able to stop after that.

Life was short, but that moment, for both of them, held the promise of forever.


End file.
